Being on Nauru will not only make it easier for them to be out of mind. It will prevent them from having access to any enforcable legal rights in regard to their asylum claim. Even basic legal assistance becomes much harder, with direct phone calls into the detention centre difficult, leaving them to rely on phone cards to call out to Australia or elsewhere.
Despite the welcome rejection by the Senate recently of legislation which would have expanded the opportunities to send asylum seekers to Nauru, the changes in the law made in 2001 that enable asylum seekers intercepted on islands off the mainland to be sent there still stand. If you think this is wrong, keep telling government MPs and Senators to go the full way and repeal this part of the law entirely.

By way of noting that the Australian government is lying when it says it is now standard policy to send all asylum seeker boat arrivals to Nauru, we should also remember that there are still other asylum seekers being kept on Christmas Island, including some who arrived in 2005.

UPDATE (23/9): An article in The Age by Michael Gordon contains some interviews and information on the 7 refugees who are now in Nauru. Michael Gordon has done a great job over recent years bringing the human stories of many of the Nauru-based refugees into the public arena.

UPDATED (30/9): This story on the ABC quotes the regional head of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), who run the camp on Nauru, as saying that it is “quite likely” the asylum seekers meet the refugee criteria. However, how long it will take the Australian government to make that assessment, and what they will do with them after they do come to that position, is another matter. The refugees are outside any legally enforceable process, so there is no way of forcing the Australian government to mett any timelines, or to ensure that refugees are promptly provided with durable protection.

“People tell me they wish me a happy life and that this would end. I say, ‘I don’t want to be happy. I just want my life back … whether it would be happy or sad doesn’t matter. I just want it back.” How can a country that prides itself on upholding principles of natural justice and the rule of law tolerate a situation where two men are detained for five years without being told what they are accused of?

UPDATED: (4/10) Today’s Age newspaper details Nauru’s decision to try to charge Australia a visa fee of more than $1.2 million a year to keep Mohammed Sagar on the island. No response as to whether Australia will pay. (not that I’m claiming a scoop or anything, but I mentioned this on this site back on 12th Septemeber.)

The Edmund Rice Centre tracked 41 returnees this year, all but four of them Afghans, and found that 39 were in perilous conditions. Only one lived in Afghanistan, constantly on the move. The rest lived illegally in Iran or Pakistan without proper documents because it had proved too dangerous for them to stay in Afghanistan. The two who had found safety lived in New Zealand

question for andrew
1 are all the asylem seekers on christmas island actualy locked up or in the comunity there.
2 its a bit hard to beleve that it cost 50 million dollars to keep a few ppl there for two years ( who got the money)!!

1 – I don’t know. I’d suspect they are in a type of community based detention, but I will see if I can find out.

2 – such costings are based on figures the government has provided, and I presume they wouldn’t overstate it. To keep facilities in a state of ‘operational readiness’ is not cheap, including a team of security, maintenance. Plus even though there’s only been two people, there have required full-tme specialist health workers plus catering. Freighting food and everything else to Nauru is also extremely expensive.

All of which just shows why it is so ridiculous and irresponsible to send asylum seekers to places like Nauru (let alone Christmas Island) just for political purposes.

Red the mix of detention arrangements on Christmas Island is that there is one family of parents with 2 children living in the community on a ‘residence dermination’ and the rest as men (over 18 years) with no kids are locked up in the phosphate hill detention facility.

There is no provision for common sense in the mandatory detention regime of Australia’s Immigration law.

Coral has clearly been living on another planet for the past five years or she would know that sending refugees to Nauru has denied them legal rights, driven them insane, seen some 450 sent home to Afghanistan by virtual force and children tormented to the point of lunacy.

No problem sending Burmese people to Nauru? Which is not a signatory to the refugee convention, which has no means of support except these refugee jails, which has no regular food supplies or phones, or mail or anything much at all? A nation that is dying and a nation that we refuse refuge to the citizens of as it sinks into the sea?

Let’s get this very clear now Coral – once and for all.

The people being kidnapped from the high seas and sent to Nauru are entering the country on “special entry visas” that they have never applied for. Why is it that Australia puts people into these absurd refugee prisons because they come without visas and then gets to send them to another foreign country with visas they have never asked for.

As Burma and Malaysia are not a million miles from Nauru I feel sure though that the refugees would have gone to Nauru if they wanted to without being forced to by us.

The absurd story of Mazhar Ali is instructive of how many laws this DIMA break to get their own way.

Mazhar Ali arrived with his sister and five nieces and nephews in January 2001 and was locked up in Woomera. By March 2001 he and his sister had been deemed by DIMA to be from Afghanistan and allowed to make refugee claims. In May his sister was rejected only on the basis of a “language analysis” test that said she could be from Pakistan or Afghanistan, the RRT decided in July that she was effectively stateless. They kept her and the children locked up knowing very well that her husband was in Sydney – they phoned him for her 4 days after refusing to tell her for 6 months that he was here.

Continued. In January 2002 he jumped off the fence at Woomera and nearly died. In July 2003 he was deported to Pakistan but no-one knew how until very recently when the documents were presented to the senate estimates.

In October 2002 DIMA used a bogus Pakistani ID – they have blacked out the face so I don’t know who it is but clearly they know it is bogus or they would have left the picture intact – sent it to the Pakistan embassy and had it ‘confirmed’ that Ali Mazher was a Pakistani. Bizarrely they claimed to have matched someon to his dead father as well. The thing is that Mazhar was never shown these documents – I am waiting for an expert to translate them for me.

In July 2003 they dragged this boy who they knew was from Afghanistan, shoved him on a plane with an Australian certificate of ID that says he is Ali Mazher from Pakistan and sent him to Karachi. He was in Bangkok airport for 2 days because he had no travel documents.

At Karachi he was arrested because he had no travel documents, bribed his way out and was deported to AFghanistan from where he sent ID for his sister and the children in December 2003. In July 2004 he was interviewed by the Norwegian Refugee council and his voting card was cited.

The truly deranged thing? The prison guards who dumped him illegally in Pakistan were TRAVELLING WITHOUT VISAS.

This is trafficking in anyone’s language but DIMA are never brought to account – they are totally lawless.

Coral: any linking of asylum seekers and terrorists is ludicrous, and one I personally find extremely offensive. Almost all the people we sent to Nauru had fled either the Taliban, Saddam or Iran. To them turn away or punish them using false assertions that they might be terrorists themselves is the sickest of jokes.

Coral your problem is that you don’t have a clue what you are talking about. Refugees have nothing to do with national security. I know that many of the bigots in Australia use it as an excuse to torment people but it is not true.

In response to turning away refugees fleeing from the Nazis the world wrote a convention in 1951 guaranteeing that such things could never happen again. Bob Menzies was one of the authors and there are two major factors.

1. Anyone turning up with a well founded fear of persecution in another country must have their claims legally and honestly considered.
2. Such refugees must never be sent to or returned to such places or the frontiers of such places.

In 1967 a protocol was written that guaranteed protection to every refugee from every area in any country that has signed the convention and protocol. Article 31 of that convention says clearly that no-one should ever be punished in anyway whatsoever for the method of arrival or the lack of documents.

This was signed by Australia on 2 December 1973 and into Australian law in 1992. At no time before 2001 did we ever consider sending people away if they came here. We might have been a bit rough but never inhuman and cruel as we are today.

The tragedy is that genuine refugees are simply not capable of travelling legally which is why they are genuine refugees – that is legally recognised in the conventions.

To tell some people that they are not allowed in because they caught a boat to an island and to send them into orbit for 5 years as we have done since 2001 punishes them.

People from the same places who are deemed not to be refugees are not turned away or locked up when they fly here. It doesn’t make a lick of sense to lock up genuine refugees and leave those who are not geniune free to roam the streets.

Wrong again, Rob. I’m not a median Australian voter or a bigot. Quite frankly, a less patient person could easily tire of your insults.

There is quite a difference between fear and precaution.

I have never voted for John Howard, not even after his large pre-election bribe of additional family payment right before the last election. I have the intelligence to know where such bribes are leading.

Unfortunately, most of the women I advised not to vote for him did so anyway, based on short-sighted greed. Now they are regretting it.

I think John Howard is relegating refugees into what amounts to permanent exile on Nauru, in order to discourage an influx of squillions of middle eastern refugees to our shores.

No doubt this would cost the government even more than maintaining a very costly, virtually empty, fully staffed facility on Nauru.

Marilyn, I think you could also give a little more thought to what other people are saying, instead of what they are not saying.

I don’t disagree with most of what you have said – insults aside.

However I do find your comment that “refugees have nothing to do with national security” to be little more than unmitigated tripe.

I have added another link to the bottom of the main post. It goes to yet another excellent and comprehensive story by veteran reporter Michael Gordon. Even if you don’t have the time to follow most of these links, I would definitley recommend having a look at this one.

ASIO turned our whole family inside out and upside down for about 6 months before they would employ one of my sons in a very sensitive government job. They told us almost nothing and I’m sure our phone was tapped.

I think ASIO agents know what they’re doing. If they have found these people unsuitable, we should trust in their expertise.

Coral what do refugees have to do with national security? We wrote and signed and enshrined the refugee convention into our domestic law.
This allows anyone to seek asylum here and is specifically designed and written to exclude it’s use as a national security issue.

For pete’s sake – over 3 million people fly into Australia every year on visas they get on the internet – I am more concerned about this because not one of them is subject to any checks at all.

There is a clause in the refugee convention that rightly excludes anyone who is a war criminal.

Today’s Age newspaper details Nauru’s decision to try to charge Australia a visa fee of more than $1.2 million a year to keep Mohammed Sagar on the island. There is also a report in the SMH detailing research into the fate of 41 Afghan asylum seekers forced back by Australia – links at bottom of the main post.

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Andrew Bartlett has been active in politics for over 25 years, including serving as a Senator for Queenland from 1997-2008. This blog reflects his own views, independent of any political party or organisation. The blog was started in 2004 and many of the links in older posts may no longer be current.

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